An update on our Audience Update project

Every year Humankind Research launches an internal project – our Audience Update - with the purpose of exploring new topics and uncovering forward-thinking insights.  This year’s Audience Update is focused on the next generation’s altruists, or Future Altruists. We spoke to gen Z and millennials to understand what ‘doing good’ means to them, exploring how they engage with doing good and what they want to see from brands and charities. The Audience Update also provides a great opportunity for junior members of the Humankind Research team to develop their experiences in moderation and recruitment, amongst other skills as they are a key part of leading the project and are therefore learning every step of the way. We started the process with full team brainstorm sessions using Mural to share ideas on what topic we wanted to approach and why. External articles and our own projects helped to keep us informed on current areas of interest and burning questions!  Our collaborative sessions meant that our initial ideas were constantly evolving alongside our brief and methodology. Initially, the team opted for a creative pre-task but noticed that this wasn't hugely successful with participants as it felt too open-ended and broad. Instead, we pivoted to digital self-ethnography via FieldNotes which proved to deliver much richer insights into our audiences.  Following the ethnography, we moved into focus groups where we could delve deeper into our audiences with the use of selected stimulus. And then came our analysis sessions where we identified the big themes and overall story before bringing our analysis to the wider team during a whole team strategy day. This allowed us to be challenged in our thinking, notice which themes were consistent with findings that the Humankind team had uncovered in other projects, and generally incorporate the expertise of the wider team on social impact work. Whilst the process has been truly rewarding and allowed us to uncover exciting insights, there have also been some challenges. Recruitment of influencers in the ‘doing good’ space was less successful, so the team adapted by recruiting via our own networks. Though uptake was slow at first, we made full use of the wider team’s networks and connections to get the word out there and reach some truly fantastic participants.  With the help of our newly launched quantitative research team, we are now thrilled to be starting the quant phase of the Audience Update and all the exciting findings it will uncover. Stay tuned!